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On the Future of European Insolvency Law

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On the Future of European Insolvency Law ON THE FUTURE OF EUROPEAN INSOLVENCY LAW INSOL Europe Academic Forum’s 5th Edwin Coe lecture Bob Wessels Professor International Insolvency Law University of Leiden, Leiden Law School Brussels, October 11th, 2012 1 The Academic Forum of INSOL Europe, founded in 2004, is a constituent body of INSOL Europe, a Europe- wide association of practitioners in insolvency. The Academic Forum’s primary mission is to engage in the representation of members interested in insolvency law and research, to encourage and assist in the development of initiatives in the insolvency field, to foster the development of research in insolvency by younger scholars and to participate in the activities organised by INSOL Europe. The membership of the Academic Forum includes insolvency academics, insolvency practitioners with recognised academic credentials as well as those engaged in the research and study of insolvency. The Academic Forum meets annually in conjunction with the main conference of INSOL Europe and also arranges half-yearly conferences around suitable themes of interest to the practice and academic communities. Previous meetings have taken place in Prague (2004), Amsterdam (2005), Monaco (2007), Leiden and Barcelona (2008), Brighton and Stockholm (2009), Leiden and Vienna (2010), Milan, Venice and Jersey (2011), and Nottingham (2012). Previous Edwin Coe lectures 1. Professor Jay L. Westbrook, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA – Barcelona 2008 2. Gabriel Moss QC, 3/4 South Square – Stockholm 2009 3. The Hon Mr Justice Ian Kawaley, Supreme Court of Bermuda, Hamilton, Bermuda – Vienna 2010 4. Professor Karsten Schmidt, President of the Bucerius Law School, Hamburg, Germany - Venice 2011 Edwin Coe LLP - 2 Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A 3TH 2 Introduction I would like to begin this afternoon by thanking the board of the Academic Forum of Insol Europe for the invitation to speak to you today.1 Early this year the European Commission issued a “Consultation on the future of European Insolvency Law”.2 It is an open, internet-based consultation inviting reactions to a questionnaire which will assist the Commission to determine whether and how the existing legal framework should be improved and modernised. My first thought was: what is European Insolvency Law? Fortunately, the Commission provides for an answer: the European Insolvency Law is laid down in Regulation (EC) No 1346/2000 on insolvency proceedings (the “Insolvency Regulation”) which applies since 31 May 2002. I am challenging this phrasing. I would like to depart from the description that European Insolvency Law (also hereinafter: EIL) is a body of rules and practices, formed both by national law and the law of the EU relating to matters of financial distress. In earlier publications I indicated that the core content of insolvency law concerns the prevention, regulation and administering of discontinuity in legal relationships of persons who have legal rights (companies or natural persons) and find themselves in financial difficulty. The essence of the legal domain of European insolvency law then is the avoidance or streamlining of (the consequences of) the possible inability to fulfil payment obligations. Consequently, in a European context, European insolvency law is also concerned with certain contractual arrangements (e.g. cross-border private arrangements or ‘work outs’) and the recording of ‘best practices’, which, in practice, play an important role.3 Presently, this body of rules and practices has certain recognisable principles in the cross- border area, such as the principle of applying the lex concursus, automatic recognition of certain judgments and cross-border cooperation between insolvency office holders. The totality of this body, however, largely is a crystal ball, as European Insolvency Law is still searching for patterns of interactions between the two systems of national laws and EU law, and the coherence within the law of the EU itself. Among the many topics that are presently 1 During the lecture only selected topics of the text were addressed. 2 http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=Insolvency. 3 See e.g. Bob Wessels, International Insolvency Law, 3rd. ed., Deventer: Kluwer, 2012, para. 10001. 3 debated, evaluated, regulated or litigated in this area, in the light of European Insolvency Law, the following three themes specifically stand out as the most important to discuss today. 1. The present state of European Insolvency Law, for which I make a distinction between: 1.1. The early period 1.2. The cross-border period 1.3. The harmonisation period The second theme concentrates on: 2. Insolvency law and its role in establishing a better Europe 2.1. Better functioning of the internal market 2.2. Initiatives regarding natural persons? My third and last theme presents a focus on: 3. Actors in the field of European Insolvency Law, being: 3.1. Legislature 3.2. Courts 3.3. Insolvency office holders 3.4. Academia I will then end with some concluding remarks regarding the Future of European Insolvency Law, which is also the title of my lecture. 1. The present state of European Insolvency Law 1.1. The early period 1. European Insolvency Law, until 2002, has showed its presence in different shapes and forms, although I add that its visibility has been limited. One of the first and very important signs has been in the area of the transfer of undertakings with Directive 77/187/EC with regard to Safeguarding of Employees’ Rights in the event of Transfer of Undertakings. The Directive, quite remarkably, is silent on the question whether it applies in cases of insolvency. In a Dutch case of 1985 the ECJ concluded that Article 1(1) of Council Directive No 4 77/187/EEC of 14 February 1977 does not apply “…. to the transfer of an undertaking, business or part of a business where the transferor has been adjudged insolvent and the undertaking or business in question forms part of the assets of the insolvent transferor.” The Court added that the Member States are at liberty to apply the principles of the Directive to such a transfer on their own initiative. The Directive, however, does apply – so the Court determines – where an undertaking, business or part of a business is transferred to another employer in the course of a procedure such as a “surséance van betaling” (judicial leave to suspend payment of debts).4 Although in this Directive “insolvency” as a term was not covered in the text, it is obvious that there is a direct effect of the European rule into the national legal system of a Member State. 2. It then took thirteen years before “insolvency” again asked for attention, now as an event which was expressly taken into account in the Directive 90/314/EC regarding the insolvency of a Tour Operator. Article 7 provides: “The organizer and/or retailer party to the contract shall provide sufficient evidence of security for the refund of money paid over and for the repatriation of the consumer in the event of insolvency”.5 Here again insolvency led to a set of national rules in the legislation of the Member States. In several other EU instruments too “insolvency” as legal phenomenon was made a part of its provisions, e.g. in the Directive 97/9/EC re Investor Compensation Schemes, Directive 2000/35 with regard to Late Payments in Commercial Transactions, Directive 2000/74 on the Protection of Employees in the Event of Insolvency of their Employer (updating Directives 77/187 and 80/987), Regulation 2001/2157 with regard to the Statute for a European company (SE) in which Article 63 provides: “As regards winding up, liquidation, insolvency, cessation of payments and similar procedures, an SE shall be governed by the legal provisions which would apply to a public limited-liability company formed in accordance with the law of the Member State in which its registered office is situated, including provisions relating to decision-making by the general 4 ECJ 7 February 1985, Case 135/83 (H. B. M. Abels v The Administrative Board of the Bedrijfsvereniging voor de Metaalindustrie en de Electrotechnische Industrie). The Court observed: “In addition, the rules on liquidation proceedings and analogous proceedings are very different in the various Member States. For that reason, and in view of the fact that insolvency law is the subject of specific rules both in the legal systems of the Member States and in the Community legal order, it may be concluded that if the directive had been intended to apply also to transfers of undertakings in the context of such proceedings, an express provision would have been included for that purpose.” The Court’s observation “that insolvency law is the subject of specific rules ….. in the Community legal order” is interesting but rather mysterious. 5 CJEU 16 February 2012, Case C-134/11 (Jürgen Blödel-Pawlik v HanseMerkur Reiseversicherung AG) decided that Article 7 of Council Directive 90/314/EEC is to be interpreted as covering a situation in which the insolvency of the travel organiser is attributable to its fraudulent use of the funds transferred by consumers. 5 meeting”, or – a recent example – the Proposal for a Regulation on the Statute for a European Foundation (FE), within which Article 36 (“Transfer of registered office”), paragraph 3 provides: “The FE shall not transfer its registered office ……… if proceedings for winding- up, insolvency or similar proceedings have been brought against it ….”6 Here, insolvency as a term seems rather narrow. The drafters certainly have not looked into the definition in the Insolvency Regulation. 3. The given examples are important for those direct involved (employees, travellers, certain legal persons etc.), but in this first pan-European period there is no sign that “insolvency” as such has been an object of specific policies of study on an EC (since 2009: EU) level, nor that “insolvency”, as far as it has been included in EU legal instruments, is drafted in a coherent way in these instruments that in their core deal with other matters.
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